Charter school breaks ground on new building

Wissahickon Charter School broke ground on a new $18 million campus off Washington Lane in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

The two-story, 49,000-square-foot building will allow the school to boost its enrollment by 500 elementary and middle school students. It currently has 450 students.

The new facility will be referred to as its Awbury campus and the school will partner with Awbury Arboretum to create an outdoor educational program. It will have 23 classrooms and is scheduled to be completed next fall.

Wissahickon Charter also partnered with Mt. Airy USA, which had been trying to transform for the last seven years what is a brownfield site at 15 E. Washington Lane that is next to the arboretum. (Brownfields are sites that were typically used for industrial purposes that are now being redeveloped after cleaning up any environmental hazards.)

“By building an environmental village in the heart of this neighborhood, we believe it is a game changer for the revitalization of our community,” Anuj Gupta, executive director of Mt. Airy USA said in a statement.